User:Tiamut/etymology

Name
The name "Palestine" is the cognate of an ancient word meaning Philistines or "Land of the Philistines". . The earliest known mention is thought to be in Ancient Egyptian texts of the temple at Medinet Habu which record a people called the P-r-s-t (conventionally Peleset) among the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt in Ramesses III's reign. The Hebrew name Peleshet (פלשת Pəléshseth), usually translated as Philistia in English, is used in the Bible to denote the southern coastal region that was inhabited by the Philistines.

The Assyrian emperor Sargon II called the same region Palashtu or Pilistu in his Annals. In the 5th century B.C., Herodotus wrote in Ancient Greek of a 'district of Syria, called Palaistinê" (whence Palaestina, whence Palestine).  Moshe Sharon writes that from this point forward, Palaestina was commonly used to refer to the coastal region, and shortly thereafter, the whole of the area inland to the west of the Jordan River. The latter extension occurred when the Roman authorities, following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba rebellion in the 2nd century A.D., renamed the Iudaea Province, Syria Palaestina (Syria Palaestina), in an attempt to erase the memory of and motivations for the Jewish revolt.  During the Byzantine period, the entire region (Syria Palestine, Samaria, and the Galilee) was renamed Palaestina, subdivided into Diocese I and II. The Byzantines also renamed an area of land including the Negev, Sinai, and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as Palaestina Salutoris, sometimes called Palaestina III.

The Arabic word for Palestine is Philistine (commonly transcribed in English as Filistin, Filastin, or Falastin). Moshe Sharon writes that when the Arabs took over Greater Syria in the 7th century, place names that were in use by the Byzantine administration before them, generally continued to be used. Hence, he traces the emergence of the Arabic form Filastin to this adoption, with Arabic inflection, of Roman and Hebrew (Semitic) names. Jacob Lassner and Selwyn Ilan Troen offer a different view, writing that Jund Filastin, the full name for the adminstrative province under the rule of the Arab caliphates, was traced by Muslim geographers back to the Philistines of the Bible.

Some other terms that have been used to refer to all or part of this land include Canaan, Greater Israel, Greater Syria, the Holy Land, Iudaea Province, Judea, Israel, "Israel HaShlema", Kingdom of Israel, Kingdom of Jerusalem, Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael or Ha'aretz), Levant, Retenu (Ancient Egyptian), Southern Syria, and Syria Palestina.

Boundaries
The boundaries of what is currently called Palestine have varied throughout history.

Ancient Egyptian texts called the entire Levantine coastal area along the Mediterranean Sea between modern Egypt and Turkey R-t-n-u (conventionally Retjenu). Retjenu was subdivided into three regions and the southern region, Djahy, shared approximately the same boundaries as Canaan, or modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories.

During the Iron Age, the Kingdom of Israel of the United Monarchy may have reigned from Jerusalem over an area approximating modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories, extending farther westward and northward to cover much (but not all) of the greater Land of Israel, although archaeological evidence for this period is very rare and disputed.

Inhabiting the southern coast called Philistia, whose borders approximate the modern Gaza Strip, the Philistine confederation was comprised of five city states: Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod on the coast and Ekron, and Gath inland. Its northern border was the Yarkon River, the southern border extending to Wadi Gaza, its western border the Mediterranean Sea with no fixed border to the east.

By the time of Assyrian rule in 722 BCE, the Philistines had become 'part and parcel of the local population,' and prospered under Assyrian rule during the 7th century despite occasional rebellions against their overlords. In 604 BCE, when Assyrian troops commanded by the Babylonian empire carried off significant numbers of the population into slavery, the distinctly Philistine character of the coastal cities dwindled away, and the history of the Philistines as a distinct people effectively ended.

The boundaries of the area and the ethnic nature of the people referred to by Herodotus as Palaestina vary according to context. Sometimes it refers to the coast north of Mount Carmel. Elsewhere, distinguishing the Syrians in Palestine from the Phoenicians, he refers to their land as extending down all the coast from Phoenicia to Egypt. Josephus used the name Παλαιστινη only for the smaller coastal area, Philistia. Ptolemy also used the term. In Latin, Pliny mentions a region of Syria that was "formerly called Palaestina" among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina (I and II, also known as Palaestina Prima, "First Palestine", and Palaestina Secunda, "Second Palestine"), have served as a name for the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Arab rule, Filastin (or Jund Filastin) was used administratively to refer to what was under the Byzantines Palaestina Secunda (comprising Judaea and Samaria), while Palaestina Prima (comprising the Galilee region) was renamed Urdunn ("Jordan" or Jund al-Urdunn).